Summer
by aperfectsong
Summary: We watched them dance in the garden, under the setting sun. They danced until after the music stopped, her dirty feet moving with his dress shoes and his arms tightly around her waist as they made circles.


Author's Notes: 

Okay. I started writing this last spring - before DH came out. It follows the prophecy that Mugglenet made that Harry would be the last horcrux and that a dementor would be needed to suck the unwanted soul from his body. But, I wouldn't read this if you haven't read DH because I guessed a few deaths right. This takes place the summer after Harry's 7th year and is told in George Weasley's POV. 

-

_Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophecy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears._

_And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love._

1 Corinthians 13 8-10 + 13

-

I spent hours that summer just staring at the clouds and the way they kept floating on by. They were greyer this year compared to other years—"From all the smoke and ashes," Ginny told me—but still I marveled at the way they just kept floating by, day after day.

-

I spent hours that summer sitting on cold metal chairs outside of Harry's room at St. Mungo's. At first, our family went all together, just like everyone else in the Wizarding World. Harry probably had more visitors his first week than any other patient had in his lifetime: old wizards who never knew him, young witches who ran their fingers across his scars, parents who held his hand for a few moments, couples who whispered "Thank You" in his ear, little kids who pointed and smiled and worshiped him – and he never said anything, just took it all in.

In that way, he served as a living memorial of the war: Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, the boy whose lightning-bolt shaped scar faded with each passing day, the boy who finally managed to defeat Voldemort at seventeen years old.

The mediwitches ended Harry Potter's visiting hours to the public early and ushered adoring fans to rooms of Aurors injured in battle and Order members who they never heard of, but who had risked their lives for peace. That's when we visited him, though I'm not exactly sure how. We must have been listed as his family.

For the first week, we visited him every day. On the first day, Ron went in with the girls – a mistake he was too young to realize. When we entered the room a few minutes later, Mum was talking to Harry quietly, while the other three huddled around the bed in tears, trying to ignore her as she told Harry about the final events of the war. They all cried as a nearby mediwitch handed Harry's wand to Mum. She just stared at it and closed her hand around it before turning her palm over and handing it to Ginny.

Ron learned his lesson quick: the second day, he went in with the Weasley men. We all stood in silence, watching Harry and hoping for the slightest movement. We didn't cry; we had to be strong for the girls, for each other.

On the third night, Bill couldn't make it. He was busy tending to Fleur, who was released from St. Mungo's earlier that day after injuries to her legs began to heal. At dinner the next night, Bill Apparated into the dining room at the Burrow with news that Fleur was pregnant. He talked animatedly with Mum as Dad grabbed an extra plate, fork and chair for Bill.

"We don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet – Fleur doesn't want to know until it's born," he explained to Mum as he helped himself to a plate full of potatoes and chicken. Despite the dark circles under her eyes, Mum looked happier than she had since the war began.

"Have you chosen any names?" she asked. "I have a great book for baby names somewhere." Mum started to stand up from the table, but Dad quietly told her to wait until everyone was finished eating. Ron looked the other way.

"Where is she now?" Ginny asked as she poked at her potatoes with a fork. She hadn't been eating as much since the war, not that any of us had been. But she didn't look well. She always said she just wasn't hungry.

"Oh, Gabrielle stopped by and Fleur said I should check in with everyone here," he said. "I wanted to let them catch up."

The meal continued in conversation about the upcoming baby until I finished my plate and was about to excuse myself from the table.

"Fred, have some more potatoes," Mum said, trying to grab the plate from in front of me. A moment passed in silence as she spooned a few potatoes onto my plate. Everyone around us seemed to hold their breath.

"I'm George, Mum," I said quietly. She didn't hear me.

"Have some more potatoes," she said again.

"No thank you," I said a little louder. Looking around the table, I noticed that Ginny's lower lip shook slightly. Her eyes met mine as she bit down on her bottom lip to keep it under control.

"Is there something wrong with the potatoes?"

"No Mum, they're great," Charlie cut in. Mum continued to stare at my empty plate as she picked at her own food. Percy shoveled a heap of potatoes into his mouth.

"When's the baby due?" Mum asked Bill. "Are you going to have time to finish a nursery?"

"Sometime around January," Bill said. "We've got time."

"Do you want help with it?" Dad asked with a small smile.

"Yeah, Dad. When the time comes." All of the plates had been emptied except for Ginny's.

"Ginny, eat," Mum said suddenly, almost yelling.

"I'm not hungry." When Ginny backed her chair out, the loud scratch of the chair against the wooden floor drew everyone to silence. A minute later I excused myself and followed her up the stairs.

Ginny and I stayed back that night while the rest of the family went to visit Harry. When they left, I made my way to Ginny's room and sat next to her on the bed. She sat quietly and scraped the wood of Harry's wand with her fingernail.

"_Lumos_," she said. I couldn't look at her, so instead I focused on the faint print of flowers on her pink bedspread. Pink used to be her favorite color, but Mum told her that it clashed with her hair. So, when Ginny grew out of her pink clothes, she didn't ask for any to replace them. The only pink she had left from her childhood was the bedspread.

I traced the flowers with my fingers, the careful stitches of a grandmother I can't remember.

"Why isn't it working?" she asked aloud, more to herself than to me. "_Lumos_," she repeated a few more times.

"It isn't your wand," I said simply.

Her eyes filled with tears as she wrapped her skinny arms around my neck. Her tears were warmer than her body was. "I want it to work," she said again and pulled away, ready to try again. She gripped the wand with the determination of a first year, ready to cast her first spell. Ginny's free hand grasped the heavy fabric beneath her, clenching it tightly like a lover's hand.

Fleur had chosen Ginny as a bridesmaid at her wedding and the dresses were the same pink color as the flowers on her bedspread. She spent a day complaining about the color pink before trying the dress on and finding that it didn't clash with her hair. I know it was Fleur's wedding, but everyone's eyes were on Ginny. She never looked so beautiful, even when she discarded Fleur's expensive shoes and relied on her bare, muddy feet to carry her from place to place. We all watched Harry's eyes drift to her unguarded, focusing on something safe: the pink of her dress, the sunlight reflecting off her hair, the sort mud collected between her toes. He couldn't meet her eyes; if he did, we knew he would lose whatever game he was playing with himself.

No one knew better than Ginny.

One chance meeting of eyes over a meal-time conversation and he lost. His eyes never left hers until they rested on the individual blades of grass beside his dress shoes as he asked her to dance.

"Are you sure?" she asked him, eyes wide.

He nodded and we watched them dance in the garden, under the setting sun. They danced until after the music stopped, her dirty feet moving with his dress shoes and his arms tightly around her waist as they made circles. We all watched, sort of in amazement, smiling because this time it was Harry, because he's almost one of us.

"_Lumos_," she said, but the light didn't come.

Later that night – the forth night – I took Ginny to visit Harry at St. Mungo's. It was late and visiting hours ended hours before, but the mediwitch on duty recognized us and let us in for a few minutes.

I sat quietly in the back of the room as Ginny pulled a metal chair to Harry's bedside. Her shaking hands found his and I watched as she lay her head atop his chest, listening as he breathed.

At least he was still breathing.

"Tomorrow is Remus's funeral," she whispered. "They're having it at Hogwarts."

I noticed that she didn't give Harry the whole story – that the body wasn't going to be there, just a casket with photographs and his favorite books – that the funeral was unofficial because the Ministry wanted nothing to do with the death of a werewolf – that Dad had to fight the Ministry to have the service on public grounds – that Remus's funeral was the first because the Ministry was still processing official deaths from the war – that it could be days, weeks even before Fred's.

"It's going to be beautiful, like Dumbledore's. And the Order will be there." I watched as my baby sister pushed messy hair out of the eyes of the man she loved and petted his head softly. He replied by exhaling.

"Oh Harry, I'm sorry that no one ever brings you good news." He inhaled.

The mediwitch appeared in the doorway, ready to tell us to leave, but she saw Ginny's fingers intertwined with Harry's and decided to give us a few more minutes. Ginny didn't notice.

"Fleur's having a baby, but I'm sure Mum already told you. They were talking about baby names at dinner and I just hope they don't name him after Fred or Remus or anyone who's gone. I hope the baby gets his own name. I know it's going to be a boy."

We sat there for what seemed like hours, until I could tell from her quiet snores that Ginny fell asleep with her head atop Harry's chest. I watched for a few moments as she moved slightly with each of his breaths before scooping her up in my arms and Apparating back to her room at the Burrow. Quietly, I pulled back the pink bedspread and laid her down. She tensed a little at the feel of cold sheets beneath her.

But she didn't wake.

On the fifth night, Ginny and I visited Harry twice. Mum was quick to tell Harry about Remus's funeral, so the rest of us sat and listened although we had been there. We were still all dressed in black, in clothes we would wear more that summer than ever again. Ginny held Harry's still hand in front of our parents and Mum smiled for a second before she realized that he still wasn't awake.

After we got back to the Burrow and everyone had fallen asleep, I opened Ginny's door a crack. She sat facing the window with a wand in her hand.

"_Lumos_," she said and the wand produced a faint glow, hardly enough to be considered light.

"Gin?" I whispered and walked towards her, careful not to step too loudly.

"It's not my wand," she said smiling. We stared at the tip of the wand for a long time, watching the light flicker on and off before Ginny put it underneath her pillow. She slid off the bed into a pair of old sneakers and asked "Are you ready?" I nodded and pulled the door to her room closed, wincing at the sound as it clicked into place.

We were nodded in by another mediwitch who closed the door to Harry's room behind us, "Privacy," she said. I watched through the window in the door as her silhouette faded down the hall, into rooms of other patients.

I sat, listening as Ginny mumbled into Harry's ear, telling him all of her favorite stories. This night, she didn't fall asleep and when it was time to leave; I watched as she brought her chapped lips down on his for a second.

He inhaled.

Our family went to St. Mungo's together for the remainder of the week. Mum would update Harry's unresponsive form with the latest news in the Ministry of Magic and with the funerals she was in charge of and she'd always try to tell him just the good news. The rest of us would just sit, listening to her voice, glad that at least one of us was strong enough to fill the silence.

The newspapers and tabloids labeled it a tragedy – sometimes they would hang around his room at the end of visiting hours, hoping to get a Weasley exclusive. Charlie punched one of them in face.

After that week, time started moving again. Dad went back to work at the Ministry and Mum tried to cook and clean and keep all of us in her sight. It was still summer, despite the lack of sun. At the Burrow, I woke up at dawn to change the bandages on my arm and was out the door to work before anyone else woke up.

That first day back, I opened the door to the backroom and started working on everything he had left undone. It was almost like he stood with me, laughing and telling me which charms to use to make our diary parchment shout insults at people who didn't know the writer's password, which angle my wand needed to be at to cast the spells just right, just like he used to.

That night when we visited Harry, I told Ginny it wasn't enough - just to remember a ghost of what he might have said - to live with a big empty feeling somewhere in my chest where it seemed like some part of me was missing.

She told me it would never be enough to just remember, but life would find a way to fill the gaps; at least, it had for her when she lost part of herself at eleven. She said she felt the emptiness too, but that she couldn't fill it on her own - she could only distract herself from it.

Even though she was my sister - even though she was fighting through this _loss_ like I was - I told her she would never understand how I felt, that somehow I had lost more than she had.

I was amazed at how young and broken I still sounded, at least compared to her calm voice. I wondered when it was exactly that she grew up and how she became so wise. Maybe war does that to people, I thought. Or maybe she was never really as young as I thought she was.

On Tuesday, I stayed at work late listening to my memory Fred's suggestions and applying them to the jokes I was inventing. I missed dinner by a few hours and as Mum fixed me a plate, I couldn't help but notice the concerned look she gave me as she set my dinner in front of me and pulled up a chair.

"George," she said softly. When she reached for my hand, my eyes began to water. "Come here," she said and I fell into her arms like a child. I felt her arms all the way around me and her hands patting my back.

"You don't have to go to work, dear," she whispered. "You could stay home for another week with Ron and Ginny and me. No one expects you to adjust this quickly. No one can adjust this quickly."

I tried to explain that I needed to, that it was my distraction – that I felt close to him there, but it came out in chokes and sobs. Somehow she understood me. Mothers are like that. She sat with me as I ate, trying unsuccessfully to refill my plate.

I just wasn't hungry.

On Wednesday, I woke up at dawn, ready to make my escape when I heard a small voice.

"I'm going with you," Ginny said as she blocked the fireplace. I noticed then that she still held Harry's wand in her right hand, like she was using it because he couldn't or maybe because carrying it around made her feel closer to him, somehow.

When we got there, I told Ginny that I was thinking of closing the shop, because it felt wrong without him, because the backroom was still full of things he left unfinished, because the war was over and people didn't need distractions anymore.

"Bullocks," she said. "Just think of all the kids at Hogwarts you'd be letting down. Besides, it was your dream. If it were different, would you want him to close it down?"

"No, but..." I muttered. "It was our dream."

"And now you're the one who's left to carry it out. You can't let him down." I admired her then, for being so strong when I needed her to. Like Mum, almost.

-

I spent hours that summer sitting in funerals, drumming my fingers along the underside of wooden pews – I sat through religious funerals for men who believed only in life and death, in earth, in magic, and funerals for kids, barely old enough to think for themselves or believe in anything. Remus's was the second war funeral I attended; Fred's the eleventh, barely a week apart.

Maybe it helped that the funerals were so close together—it seemed like we lost them together, just days apart. It only seemed natural to grieve them together, to remember them one after the other.

I stood in front of the mirror wearing my best suit and I saw my brother in the reflection. And I finally understood the look Mum sometimes gave me, when she saw me and thought Fred, when she thought for a minute that it never happened, and then realized his eyes weren't the ones she was looking into, that Fred's freckles gathered in different places and his nose was the tiniest bit thinner, that his heart wasn't beating anymore.

I wished then that I had a different face, so people wouldn't look at me and see Fred; that I had a different voice, so when I spoke, people would hear my voice, instead of as a way to remember him; that it would have been both of us, because it felt wrong to breathe when he couldn't.

I took his wand from off the mantle just to feel it in between my fingers, the last thing he touched. It felt too smooth, too perfect.

At the funeral, I ran Fred's wand alongside the wooden pew until Ginny grabbed hold of my hand and squeezed it tightly. The hardness of the wand pressed into my finger with her tight grasp and when she let go, the indentation stayed – a little red mark, not even a bruise, not even anything.

I looked around at Mum and Dad and Bill and Charlie and Percy and Ron and Ginny and I couldn't help it. Mum buried her face behind Dad's handkerchief, but they held hands tightly. Bill rubbed his eyes with his palms when he thought Fleur wasn't looking, but he kept his eyes focused on the casket. Charlie kept looking to the floor, the ceiling, Ginny's shoes, in order to keep his face dry, to save his tears for somewhere more private. Percy cried and kept sneaking looks at my face, maybe trying to use it to remember Fred's; or maybe he wanted to look for what it was that kept me alive without him. Ron held Hermione's hand in one of his and Ginny's in the other so his tears just dried on his face, leaving long shiny streaks. Ginny loosened her hand from mine to wipe her eyes every few moments. At one point she handed me a handkerchief, but I didn't take it. Like Ron, I let the tears stain my cheeks.

We visited Harry that night, Ginny and I.

She didn't tell him about Fred's funeral. Maybe, like my mum, she was trying to protect him, to show him that the war really was over; that it really would be over if he just woke up. Or maybe, it was just something Harry wouldn't get. Or maybe, she needed time to sort it all out in her head, to reconcile it with the fact that she was still alive. I did.

I listened as Ginny told Harry the story of meeting him at Platform 9 ¾ when she was ten years old and the story of how he saved her life at eleven. I even interrupted her to tell Harry a few of the more embarrassing aspects of her crush, some that Ginny had even forgotten, like the embarrassing card Fred and I had convinced her to send.

"George! Don't tell him that - he probably forgot about it and now never be able to look at me without laughing again," she said, trying to cover my mouth with her small hand.

She told him the story of how she fell back in love with him when she was fourteen, but didn't say anything because she wanted to be his friend, if nothing else. Then she told him the story of their first kiss, how chapped her lips were, how happy she was that he finally noticed her.

Ginny told him that she had six brothers who loved her and that he was the only boy they thought deserved her. She said she was going to wait for him.

We talked about it - what she would do if he didn't wake. Her answers were always varied; always so fantastic that I knew she didn't actually believe them. The only thing she really believed in that summer was that he would wake up - that he had to - that he still had his soul. I asked her how she knew and she told me plainly, "I can feel it."

Somehow, after that, I began to feel it too. Some days, we would enter the room and find sweat along his forehead, his eyebrows furred as if in concentration. When I touched my hand to his forehead, I could feel his soul pressing against mine, like he was trying to tell me he was still there. When I told Ginny, she told me she'd felt it all along.

Ginny and I were at work when he woke. Mum Apparated to the store with the news - Dad, Bill, Fleur, Charlie, Percy, Ron, and Hermione were already on their way to St. Mungo's. Because Ginny still couldn't Apparate, I grabbed her hand and pulled her to me. With Mum in front of us, we ran through the halls of St. Mungo's, past the crowds, straight to Harry's room. When the door opened and I saw Harry sitting up in bed, looking the same as he always had, I smiled.

"Wotcher, Harry," I said. "Welcome back." Ron and Hermione sat at the edges of his hospital bed and Ginny moved forward to join them.

"Thanks George," he said softly, probably noticing that the space where Fred should have been standing was empty. Mum pulled her arms around him tightly and he smiled as he hugged her back. With tears in her eyes, my little sister handed him his wand and then gripped his hand tightly. He intertwined their fingers.

"Hey Gin," we heard him whisper. He wrapped his arms around her and she pressed her face into his neck to muffle her crying. "It's okay." I couldn't really tell then - if she was crying because she was happy he was back or if it was that she finally realized that Fred wouldn't be coming back.

I noticed a sniffling sound coming from the corner - Percy. Charlie placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. When Percy met my glance, I finally noticed the tears in my own eyes that had probably been there since I left the store. I watched as Ron placed one arm around Hermione and pulled her toward his chest, their wet eyes still focused on Harry. Mum and Dad held each other loosely - I noticed the shaking in his hands as he used his thumb to wipe the tears from her eyes. Bill held Fleur's hand and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief that was too feminine to be his.

"Thanks 'Arry," Fleur said softly from her chair.

I moved toward my brothers; Charlie put his arm around my shoulder and slowly, I let my arm find its way around his.

I tried not to think of returning to The Burrow -to the sweaters in my size with a bold F stitched on them carefully, to his wand resting on the mantle. I tried not to think of the silent conversations we wouldn't have, or living a life where no one would ever understand me as well as he did. I tried not to think of the flat in Diagon Alley that I hadn't visited since he died, where I knew his clothes lay scattered and his dirty dishes still sat in the sink. I tried not to think of the wish I made when I was seven that I wouldn't have to share my birthday anymore. I even tried not to think of waking up tomorrow in a quiet room by myself and looking over to his empty bed - the one the matched mine.

My eyes carried me around the room: to my parents and brothers, to Fleur and Hermione and finally to the messy-haired boy whose arms still held my sixteen-year-old sister, whose victory over Voldemort saved us.

_Just keep going_, I told myself. _And life will fill in the holes_.


End file.
